The present invention relates in general to communications systems and equipment. In particular, the invention relates to electronic outdoor panels for door entry systems and video door entry systems, which in general facilitate accessibility for anyone, but particularly for handicapped persons.
Outdoor panels for electronic door entry systems and video door entry systems are used to communicate between people that are outdoors and the residents of a dwelling, and to do so, it is previously required that a call be made to the dwelling, for which reason individual push buttons that have a label associated with the number of the dwelling or the name of the resident in order to be able to locate them; a keypad like a telephone, which can be mechanical and/or be on a touch screen that enables dialing the number of the dwelling; or an agenda of names that can be moved until the resident is located and selected, are usually used.
Although these systems have been used for a long time and have been perfected over the years, they still entail a series of problems for certain groups, as indicated below.
People with visual disabilities have problems calling a dwelling since they cannot locate the push button to call it, since they are not able to read the label associated with it or, in the case of the outdoor panel that incorporates an agenda that is already printed or on an electronic screen, they are not able to visualize the name of the person they want to contact.
People with physical-motor disabilities, who, for example, move in wheelchairs, cannot reach the corresponding push button or keypad in order to make the call since the outdoor panel is usually installed at a height comfortable for persons that are standing.
People with difficulty moving their upper limbs or fingers cannot push the buttons or type codes on the keypad.
In this same context, deliverymen usually have their hands full, which makes it difficult for them to call the dwelling to which they need to make the delivery.
Due to security or privacy, names are sometimes not shown on the card holders associated with the call push buttons and only the number of the dwelling is shown, such that if the number of the dwelling where they live is not known, they cannot be located and called.
Attempts to solve the problems described above have been made, but a solution has not been found that solves them all at the same time.
For example, transparent adhesive tags can be used with the dwelling number engraved in Braille and placed over the card holder associated with each push button. This solution is complex when names must be labeled and it requires a personalized process that makes the installation of the equipment slower and more expensive. Furthermore, they can be taken off easily or they wear down as time goes by since they are not protected by the card carrier. Another limitation is found in the proportion of blind people who are able to read Braille, which is estimated at 1%, and even more so now that there are new technologies with screen reading by means of voice synthesis.
There are countries where the local accessibility code requires the placement of outdoor panels at a height accessible to people in wheelchairs, which hinders use for people who are standing because they have to bend over in order to use it, or requires duplicating the outdoor panel, which causes discomfort of use or a higher cost respectively.
An interesting solution that is already used in personal devices such as smartphones or tablets, as well as in computers, are voice recognition systems and assistants such as Siri (Apple), Google Now (Google), Alexa (Amazon) or Cortana (Microsoft). These systems, however, cannot be implemented in an outdoor panel to resolve the previous problems since they have the following limitations:
They require pressing a button or pronouncing a keyword that starts the recognition motor, thus preventing any word that is pronounced in the proximity thereof from being interpreted as an order or request for information. For example, Siri requires pressing the home button of the iPhone for a time, just as Cortana requires pressing a specific button, Google Now requires saying the phrase ‘Hello Google’ and Alexa requires saying the word ‘Alexa’. A user of an outdoor panel does not have any reason to know these calling methods since they will use it sporadically. In the case of blind people, we will come back to the problem of detecting where the push button is.
These voice-recognition assistance systems are based on recognition in the cloud by means of external servers that process the information. An electronic door entry system panel does not normally have this connectivity.
These systems use short-range acoustic systems, normally no more than 20 cm, since they are intended for personal devices that would not be useful in the case of an outdoor panel since the user is usually at an arm's length away, in other words, around 50 cm, and furthermore they do not tolerate ambient noise and therefore do not work well outdoors.
Some attempts at using this voice recognition technology in the field of electronic door entry systems have been made, but all of them also rely on the need to push a button, which for the previous groups, mainly the physically disabled and blind, is a drawback, or they rely on the detection of the person by means of a proximity detector, which can fail in the case of people in wheelchairs.
In the state of the art, patent applications such as GR20140100122A, EP2448233A1, DE19954844A1 or utility model CN204496627U require pressing the activation button of the voice recognizer. Furthermore, they are limited to recognizing the names of the residents and do not make it possible to call by means of the number of the dwelling, since the name of the person is sometimes unknown or not provided because of privacy. Furthermore, this presents a drawback in the installation since when said installation is completed, nobody is living in the building and therefore it does not have this information, for which reason calls will not be able to be made until the corresponding name is configured. Another characteristic of these applications is that they do not enable changing the language in a dynamic manner so that foreigners are able to use it without problems.
Besides these generic problems, each of these documents has the following specific problems:
In application GR20140100122A, the voice recognition equipment is a complement to the electronic door entry system panel that incorporates its own microphone and loudspeaker, for which reason it entails an added cost, is more complex to install and does not discern the conversation of the user with the dwelling from the input of the call name, giving rise to misinterpretations, and furthermore, it requires broadband internet connection to start perfecting the acoustic model in order to improve recognition.
Document EP2448233A1 does not take into account the privacy of people, since when a doubt comes up between two names, it plays both of them so that the user may select one.
In DE19954844A1 the objective is to eliminate the call push buttons for which reason it impairs people with speech impairments or that do not know the local language.
The utility model CN204496627U enables making the call exclusively by using the dwelling number but not the name and it does not distinguish whether the vocalized number is for calling the dwelling or for opening the door.
Therefore, the current state of the art does not precede a system capable of resolving the previously described problems as a whole and in a satisfactory manner that enables making the call to the dwelling by using voice commands without requiring the recognition motor to be previously activated, when the user is in front of the outdoor panel, by means of a push button for that purpose and/or a presence detector, and by indistinctly using the number of the dwelling or the name of the resident in the voice call command. Neither possesses both modalities.
All of these precedents are limited to making the call to the dwelling by only indicating the name of the resident without previously identifying the command, for which reason they do not enable other voice command options, such as asking for help in using the outdoor panel or calling the concierge or even configuring the operations thereof by the installer or maintenance personnel.